Catching my balance.

Friends & Family

22 December 2010

The reason why the word satin is only one letter away from Satan is that satin is of the devil.

Glitter? Also of the devil.

Pretty much anything in the fabric store your five year old niece would think was awesome? Of. The. Devil.

Mr. P kind of summed it up when, upon returning home last night he said (and I quote), "Holy crap! There's glitter everywhere! It's on the cat! It looks like a five year old exploded in here!"

Indeed. There is glitter everywhere. The problem with glitter is that, while shiiiiiiny, it does a piss poor job of sticking to what it's been stuck to. Unless it's the cat.

But it is very shiny. And princess-y. Right?

Satin, I have now discovered, is a complete PitA to work with. IT SLIDES. It's slippery. EVEN WHEN PINNED.

On the upside, the only thing left is to get the zipper in. Attached to the slippery satin and glittering overskirt. But almost done. To my eye it looks huge. I used the size five pattern, so it should be her size. Except when I hold it up it looks like it should be for a twelve year old. Maybe she'll still be into princesses when she's twelve?

21 November 2010

Holidays are supposed to be fun and whatnot, but mostly I think they're pretty stressful much of the time. Traveling when everyone else is traveling, maybe hosting, maybe just trying to get somewhere. Christmas coming, which means trying to figure out what to get people, when to have the time to get it, and how to pay for it all. Ug.

Usually I refuse to go anywhere at Thanksgiving. One year I sat in an airport for most of the holiday and had an epiphany that it was seriously not fun and puts one into much too close proximity with pretty much all of one's fellow Americans (a group perhaps better enjoyed at a distance, or at least not cramped into the same plane) to go anywhere for Thanksgiving, and that the reward-- a much too short period of time spent with the family while they were all either watching football or cooking-- was not reward enough for the horror that is Dulles on the Wednesday before the National Day of Stuffing One's Self. Since then I've hosted Thanksgiving Weekend feasts for groups large and small, but have refused go further afield than the grocery store for something I forgot.

This year we are traveling. The upside is that we will not be flying anywhere, and as far as I know we will not be driving on I-95 at any point, both mercies I will take gladly. The downside is that we are traveling. The down downside is that it will not be the first traveling of what is already going to be a hectic week: project deadlines that fall tomorrow for two large projects, and so must be completed today or else, followed by traveling to two different locations Monday and Tuesday for work that will involve quite a bit of driving and some quality time at the Holiday Inn, work on Wednesday, and then down to North Carolina for the festivities. Somewhere in there I need to bake some more pumpkin bread, as I've decided that is probably the only thing that will travel well. Also, as someone who doesn't eat meat, my suspicion is that the pumpkin bread I bring may be the only thing at a Southern Thanksgiving meal that doesn't involve an animal.

So someone will stuff the bird, I'm sure, everyone will stuff their bellies, but it looks like most of my stuffing has been done to my schedule. I keep hoping that my fairy godmother is going to come down and grant me a wish-- a vacation, maybe?-- but that dang bimbo seems to have lost my address.

06 October 2010

Today is our anniversary, and I am soooo happy to have the super awesome Mr. P in my life, and to have had him as a husband for three years. Has it already been three years?! I can't even remember life in the pre-Mr. P period, and that's just fine.

Here are things that, today, came to my attention as being suck-a-licious:

1) The police in Richmond are completely useless. I knew this already, and it is never a surprise when I witness them being useless, it's just that often when they are being useless it produces a scenario of great inconvenience. For whomever might end up being collateral damage in whatever piece of poorly executed theater is going on. I do hope to get through my time here without any actual need for the police, at which point one assumes that inconvenience and annoyance would be ratcheted up about eleventy thousand percent.

This morning I came up the Cary Street exit off 195. Cary street was blocked, but not at the corner, not at a place where one could see that it was blocked off until they had committed themselves to the turn, and had missed out on the opportunity to completely avoid the blockade across Cary by going straight. This in addition to the ridiculous one way street system that they have going on, and you have a goat rodeo in the Ukrops/Martins parking lot. Someone needed to a) divert traffic on to a STREET-- an option were one to do so at the corner, rather than assuming that everyone will simply slip through the parking lot, and b) start, you know, directing traffic. The blockade had an actual reason (for once)-- some building was on fire on the next block, smoking away in the distance. But fires are the purview of firemen and firewomen. Traffic diversion? This is the po-po. Which is why, when I was inching up to the half hour mark trapped in the Ukrops parking lot watching the authorites chow down on donuts in the middle of blockaded Cary Street while we all sat there waiting for salvation, I became Really, Really, Annoyed.

b) The next thing that sucks is when you have a recollection of having completed your homework but for that one nagging question, only to discover that you had written out all the formulas in longhand, but had failed to take the next, crucial step of typing them into your homework assignment. My zipping of the data through SPSS and bob's your uncle homework assignment just got way longer, and I have no one but myself to blame. Le Sigh.

c) When it is your anniversary and your husband is in class until ten of the pm. :( Sad clown. Perhaps we can celebrate this weekend on the third anniversary of our being married for, like, five days.

On the upside, we're going to see Built to Spill this weekend, which I'm pretty psyched about, and then going to visit friends and their brand spanking new sprog, just home from the hospital. Looking forward to it!

03 October 2010

There has been an abundance of apples at the farmer's market (our CSA brings us naturally grown apples from a nearby orchard), and I like apples, but an abundance of them can mean only one thing: PIE.

I actually made two different apple pies last week for a meetup at work-- one traditional apple, the other an experimental apple butterscotch crumble. They both went over well. Homemade crust, people, it's the thing to do when making pie.

Well I had more apples and today was an overcast day that finally seems to be foreshadowing fall (it's only freaking October already, sheesh), so I thought another pie was in order. Traditional apple, homemade crust. Yum!

After pie Mr. P stretched out on the couch to read his homework for school. Thibodaux kitty decided to help him. Mr. Tibbs' super power is putting people in trances.

Of course when he puts you in a trance he also entrances himself, so the result is that you are suddenly napping on the couch....

29 September 2010

Wedding bells, for my friend Sokhieng and her fellah.(Or maybe her mec?)

Went up to Jersey last weekend to see them get hitched. It was so good to see her-- we were right down the street from each other in Phnom Penh, but haven't shared a neighborhood since I got back to the States. Since then it's been hit and run visits to Berkeley and Evanston and D.C., all too few and far between. Who knows where they'll land next... where ever it is, I hope I'll get to visit. In the meantime, I'm preordering my copy of her book, coming out next year, based on the dissertation she was working on while we were in Cambodia. (Whoo hoo! Rock on with your brilliant self!)

26 September 2010

We went to my friend Leigh Anne Chambers' opening at ArtSpace at Plant Zero in Richmond on Friday evening. It was lovely to see her, as always, and I enjoyed seeing her work in person (she doesn't live in Richmond, so often I see her work only as photographs). If you are in town, you should pop down and have a look.

She titled her show Umheimlich, which I recalled from reading Freud in grad school as meaning "uncanny." I know that I read the Freud, but then I think that his theory of the umheimlich was picked up and used by visual culture theorists, and others, I would imagine. Since I saw the title I've been trying to recall where else I've seen that idea used. I have a rather unheimlich feeling that I really should know...

Speaking of umheimlich, Mr. P sent this to me, telling me that watching it made him feel queasy. Watch. Before watching it I didn't know what he was talking about. But then watching it, I totally get it. It is uncanny. In the queasy way that can make one feel unmoored. Or maybe just Mr. P and me.

12 September 2010

Mr. P's opening was Saturday night, and things went pretty well. He gave an artist talk and there were quite a few people there with lots of questions and interest in the process, the project, and the work.

Two pieces sold at the opening-- my favorite piece, and his favorite, so how do you like them apples? But I like the whole show, so there's more to see, love, and buy, people!

We got to see loooots of friends, which was awesome. I so miss my DC crew, and so many of them were out for the show-- it's great to see them, and great to have their support.Got to have dinner with Anita and Bink and Dr. Scientist and Lea&B, and so many others who came-- yeay! Also got to see friends from a bit further afield-- down from Annapolis with the toddler that I've never met, which was great. And my parents who drove all the way down from Massachusetts! So nice of them to come. And we got to stay with our awesome friends Rebecca and Eric and have a super yummy breakfast before the drive back.... so good to see everybody.

On the way back we stopped in Thornburg so Phil could get something to drink. In the quickmart or whatever at the gas station just off the highway I saw this display:

24 August 2010

Today is my anniversary. Of myself. Ma anniversaire. My birthday. I kind of hate birthdays, and then part of me kind of just doesn't care. I sometimes used to forget it was my birthday. But marriage (thank you to sweet Mr. P) and Facebook have changed all this, really. The upside of which is that as long as I check it regularly I don't forget other people's birthdays. And, admittedly, it's kind of nice to have other people wishing you a happy on your birthday since FB has reminded them that it's my birthday.

The other thing it did was remind me that I have not one, not two, but three friends with the same birthday. Weird, no?